[189] Francis Ermatinger, one of the chief factors for the Hudson's Bay Company, came to the Columbia region about 1824; two years later he was in command of Fort Kamloops when Governor Simpson passed that way. In 1828, he appears to have been stationed at Fort Okinagan on the upper Columbia, while Wyeth met him in the Snake River country in 1832-34. He married a niece of Madame McLoughlin, wife of the governor of Vancouver, and held various important stations. In the autumn of the year in which De Smet encountered him, he led the brigade into California as far as Yerba Buena (San Francisco). Upon the establishment of the provincial government in Oregon, he was elected (1845) treasurer. He is thought to have ultimately retired to Canada.--ED.
[190] For Fort Hall see our volume xxi, p. 210, note 51 (Townsend).--ED.
[191] Bidwell (_Century Magazine_, xix, p. 120) gives the names of three in addition to Romaine, the Englishman--Peyton, Rodgers, and Amos E. Frye. Thirty-two of the California party went on to Fort Hall with the missionaries, while the remainder, among them Bidwell, branched off to the west from Soda Springs.--ED.
[192] For Bear River and Soda Springs see Townsend's _Narrative_, in our volume xxi, pp. 199, 200, notes 44, 45.--ED.
[193] According to Bidwell (_op. cit._, p. 120), these two men were Bartleson, from Jackson County, Missouri, and "a Methodist Episcopal preacher, whose name I think was also Williams."--ED.
[194] This cañon of the Sweetwater is about five miles above Independence Rock. It is a cut about three hundred yards long, and thirty-five wide through a spur of the mountains in Natrona County, Wyoming. See illustration of cañon in Frémont's "Exploring Tour," _Senate Docs._, 28 Cong., 2 sess., 174, p. 57.--ED.
[195] The ascent of the South Pass is so gradual that without instruments it is difficult to know when one attains the summit. See Wyeth's _Oregon_, in our volume xxi, p. 58, note 37.--ED.
[196] For Little and Big Sandy, see Townsend's _Narrative_, in our volume xxi, p. 187, note 36. The former was the beginning of Sublette's Cut Off, sometimes called the "Dry Drive," because of scarcity of water on the route. This crossed directly to Bear River, without passing southward by Fort Bridger. Such would seem to have been the route taken by De Smet's company. The regular trail went down the Big Sandy, forded Green River near its forks, and proceeded across to the site of Fort Bridger, founded two years later.--ED.